Levon Aronian. Armenian with an ELO of 2776 points who currently ranks 10th in international comparison.

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Triple French Champion who was recently defeated by Yi Wei at the City of Leon Masters Tournament. Now 12th in world rankings, 2754 ELO points.

Jon Ludvig Hammer. Grandmaster and Norwegian born in 1990 – like Magnus Carlsen. Won the Norwegian National Championship in 2013 and ranks 75th internationally with an ELO of 2665.

*ELO-ratings from May 2015

xxx

The competitors started with a blitz chess tournament on June 15 (3 minutes + 2 seconds, begging at 1st move), the results of which determined the starting positions of the actual tournament.

The prize money fund contained 300,000 US-Dollars, 75,000 of which were reserved for the victor. Ranks two and three were rewarded with 50,000 and 40,000.

Veselin Topalov prevailed with 6.5 out of 9 points after 9 suspenseful rounds over Vishy Anand (6 points) and won the overall tournament. Until the very last round, the two of them fought for the title. Hikaru Nakamura came off 3rd, while Magnus Carlsen, who usually isn’t satisfied with anything other than the gold medal, only ranked 5th at disastrous 3.5 points.